Posts

VOTD: Ari Sandel’s Academy Award-Winning Short Film West Bank Story By Peter Sciretta/May 27, 2010 12:00 am EST Yesterday it was reported that Academy Award-winning USC grad Ari Sandel was in talks to direct the big screen adaptation of Neil Strauss’ bestselling book The Game: Penetrating The Secret Society of Pickup Artists. So I thought it would be as good a time than any to feature West Bank Story, the short film which won Sandel an Oscar in 2007 for Best Live Action Short Film....

VOTD: Improv Everywhere’s Star Wars Subway Car By Peter Sciretta/July 14, 2010 12:39 am EST Improv Everywhere is a group of New Yorkers who love to “cause scenes of chaos and joy in public places.” You’ve surely seen many videos of their previous stunts, as many of them have gone viral around the interwebs. Their latest mission was to reenact he first Princess Leia / Darth Vader scene from Star Wars on a New York City subway car....

Watch The First 5 Minutes Of FX’s ‘American Horror Story’ By Angie Han/Sept. 30, 2011 3:00 pm EST FX’s American Horror Story won’t debut until next week, but it’s already been getting some intriguing buzz. The premise sounds normal enough: Connie Britton, Dylan McDermott, and Taissa Farmiga star as the Harmon family, who relocate from Boston to a haunted house in Los Angeles; Jessica Lange plays their neighbor. However, early reviews have indicated that it’s outrageously over-the-top and very, very weird in its execution....

‘Blues Brothers’ TV Show Being Shopped Around Hollywood By Germain Lussier/Aug. 31, 2011 7:00 am EST The Blues Brothers got their start on TV, made a big splash on the big screen and now might be dancing back to the boob tube. Variety reports a new take on the classic comedy duo is being shopping around to possibly become a new television series. The show would see Jake and Elwood, famously played by John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd, just released from jail looking for Elwood’s real father....

‘Django Unchained’ Adds Todd Allen, Would Have Cast Jonah Hill But For Scheduling Difficulties [Updated] By Russ Fischer/Nov. 9, 2011 3:00 pm EST Briefly: Quentin Tarantino has the primary players locked down for his anti-slavery ‘southern’ Django Unchained. Jamie Foxx plays the freed slave Django; Christoph Waltz plays Dr. King Schultz, the bounty hunter who frees him; and Leonardo DiCaprio plays Calvin Candie, the plantation owner and slave runner that Django and Schultze have to go through to find Django’s wife Broomhilda (Kerry Washington)....

‘Magic Mike’ Red-Band Trailer: Hey, Put Your Pants Back On! By Russ Fischer/June 13, 2012 2:30 pm EST At this point I don’t think Steven Soderbergh’s new film Magic Mike needs a whole lot of introduction. For those just catching up, the film is based on Channing Tatum’s late-teens experience as a male exotic dancer, and features Tatum, Alex Pettyfer, Matthew McConaughey, and more beefy guys as the dancers in a Florida club....

‘The Godfather’ Tops List Of Films People Pretend To Have Seen By Angie Han/April 23, 2011 10:00 am EST A new survey conducted by British video rental service LOVEFiLM affirmed what we already knew, but don’t necessarily like to admit: People lie about having seen films they haven’t. The poll surveyed Brits to find out whether they’d ever lied about seeing movies they hadn’t — and if so, which movies they’d fibbed about watching....

‘The Social Network’ Wins Boston, Los Angeles, New York Film Critics Awards And More By Germain Lussier/Dec. 13, 2010 12:15 pm EST Much like the website it’s based on, The Social Network is turning into a juggernaut. David Fincher’s film about the rise of Facebook is beginning to gain serious award season momentum as it picked up Best Picture awards from the Boston, Los Angeles, New York, New York Online, Southeastern and Indiana Film Critics’ Associations as well as being named one of the top films by the American Film Institute along with the Houston, St....

‘Wolverine 2’ Shaping Up To Shoot In New York And Japan Starting In March By Russ Fischer/Oct. 18, 2010 7:29 am EST We may receive a commission on purchases made from links. One of the more appealing aspects of the project might be notion of shooting in Japan, and Deadline says that Darren Aronofsky’s directing deal is close enough to done that a schedule is being drawn up for the film....

Alex Garland, Writer Of 28 Days Later And Sunshine, Scripting Logan’s Run By Russ Fischer/June 16, 2010 8:23 pm EST A remake of Logan’s Run or, more properly, a new adaptation of William F. Noland and George Clayton Johnson’s novel, has been in the works for a long time. Warner Bros. and Joel Silver are now moving ahead with a 3D take on the story, to be directed by Ridley Scott protege Carl Erik Rinsch....

Big Rumor: Jamie Bell Cast In Spider-Man Reboot By Russ Fischer/June 7, 2010 9:15 am EST Briefly: I’ll keep this short, since we have no reliable info to go on. The site Bleeding Cool is reporting that multiple sources have told them that actor Jamie Bell has been tapped to star in Sony’s reboot of Spider-Man, directed by Marc Webb. If you’ll recall, he was on the shortlist reported a couple weeks ago....

Casting Bits: Wentworth Miller In ‘Analog;’ Paul Walker In Fred Durst’s ‘Pawn Shop Chronicles’ By Russ Fischer/Feb. 15, 2011 4:00 pm EST Prison Break star Wentworth Miller has been newsworthy of late because he wrote the script for Stoker, which Park Chan-wook will direct with stars Mia Wasikowska, Colin Firth and Nicole Kidman. Now he has booked a new role, taking the lead in an indie called Analog, which Mike Million wrote and will direct....

Casting Notes: Topher Grace, Paul Rudd, And Kristen Wiig In ‘Bobby Blue Sky’; Carla Gugino In ‘MILF’; Angelina Jolie In Bosnian War Romance By Russ Fischer/Aug. 23, 2010 3:30 pm EST Brief details on this first one: Topher Grace, Paul Rudd, and Kristen Wiig are reportedly set for the indie comedy Bobby Blue Sky, written by Parks and Recreation’s Emily Kapnek. The film is about “three dysfunctional siblings coming to terms with the way their baby brother’s accidental fame as a character in their father’s children’s book series warped their lives....

Confirmed: Kevin Costner Is Jonathan Kent In Zack Snyder’s Superman By Germain Lussier/March 17, 2011 6:00 pm EST Another piece of rumored casting just became official. Director Zack Snyder has signed Kevin Costner to play Jonathan Kent, adopted father to the Man of Steel (Henry Cavill) and husband to Martha Kent (Diane Lane), in his new version of Superman. There’s no word exactly how extensive Costner’s part is, but seeing him back on the big screen in a film of this magnitude is truly, pun intended, super....

Cool Stuff: Finally, We Have A Real Working Hoverboard (Kinda) By Peter Sciretta/May 28, 2010 10:00 am EST When I was a kid I believed Hoverboards were real. No, I wasn’t particularly stupid — I just was a bit gullible. During a Making Of Back To The Future Part II television special, director Robert Zemeckis said, in all seriousness, that the the hoverboards used in the movie were real, yet they were not being released to the public due to parental complaints regarding safety....

Daniel Radcliffe To Play Poet Allen Ginsberg In ‘Kill Your Darlings’ By Russ Fischer/Nov. 30, 2011 7:00 am EST If I presented to you the following list, what would you pick as the common thread? Think about: Hank Azaria, David Cross, John Turturro, Ron Livingston and James Franco. They’re all actors who have played beat poet Allen Ginsberg, author of Howl, in various projects over the years. And now Daniel Radcliffe may be the latest addition to the list....

First Clip From Danny Boyle’s ‘127 Hours’; Just How Intense Is This Film, Anyway? By Russ Fischer/Sept. 13, 2010 12:30 pm EST I’m again breaking the general (if rather loose) /Film mandate against posting clips to present to you the first clip from Danny Boyle’s new film 127 Hours, which in the past two weeks has been taking the festival circuit by storm. And by ambulance: at screenings during both the Telluride and TIFF festivals, audience members reportedly required medical attention due to the intensity of the film’s amputation sequence....

Francis Ford Coppola Using 3D For One Part Of Twixt Now And Sunrise'? By Russ Fischer/Jan. 7, 2011 5:30 pm EST Last year Francis Ford Coppola quietly put a new film into production called ‘Twixt Now and Sunrise. It stars Val Kilmer, Ben Chaplin, David Paymer and Tetro’s Alden Ehrenreich. The story has elements of gothic horror and romance, and is based on a dream (“more of a nightmare,” the director later said) that he worked into a short story....

Get One More Look At ‘Prometheus’ Via Scene-Setting UK Trailer By Russ Fischer/March 19, 2012 7:30 am EST But we’re not done yet. The last new material is this UK trailer for the film. This is a pretty dramatically recut version of the full theatrical trailer that also features more footage from the first act. This trailer is a lot quieter for the first half of the running time than the more showy US one, and while it doesn’t show off quite as much of the big footage we see in the US trailer, this might be the best look at the film yet....

International Movie Trailer: Mark Romanek’s ‘Never Let Me Go’ By Russ Fischer/Sept. 11, 2010 8:51 am EST Reviews have been pouring out of Telluride and Toronto for Never Let Me Go, the Mark Romanek-directed adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel. (Peter’s review is here, and a two-part interview with Romanek is here and here.) The consensus isn’t uniform, but those who like the movie seem to really like it, which is always a good sign, at least from the perspective of wanting to see a film that works as a story and a snapshot into a specific world....